ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Immunol.
Sec. Autoimmune and Autoinflammatory Disorders : Autoimmune Disorders
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2025.1652999
Monocyte-Driven IFN and TNF Programs Orchestrate Inflammatory Networks in Antisynthetase Syndrome-Associated Interstitial Lung Disease
Provisionally accepted- 1Department of Pathology, Shantou University Medical College, Shantou, China, Shantou, China
- 2Department of Rheumatology and Immunology, Shantou Central Hospital, Shantou, China
- 3Department of Biomedical Sciences, University of Sassari, Sassari, Italy, Sassari, Italy
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Objective: Antisynthetase syndrome-associated interstitial lung disease (ASS-ILD) exhibits clinical heterogeneity and progression, with unclear immunopathogenic mechanisms. This study aimed to define the cell type-specific interferon immune signatures and transcriptional networks underlying ASS-ILD.: Single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) was performed on peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) from three treatment-naive ASS-ILD patients and three healthy controls (67,421 cells). A comprehensive analysis was conducted in conjunction with an external cohort, encompassing 126,026 cells. The analytical pipelines included the following: AUCell for interferon-stimulated gene (ISG) activity scoring, Seurat for clustering, Monocle for trajectory inference, and CellChat for cell-cell communication. The inference of transcription factor activity was facilitated using decoupleR software. Results: Monocyte-specific ISG activity was identified and validated in an integrated cohort of 126,026 cells. Among the six monocyte subsets, mono2 exhibited elevated IFNG expressions and a preferential inflammatory trajectory, marked by upregulated innate and adaptive immune pathways. Cell-cell interaction modeling revealed dysregulated type II interferon (IFN-II) and tumor necrosis factor (TNF) signaling, with mono2, NK, and CD8⁺ T cells as key signal transmitters. Regulatory network analysis revealed that the transcription factors ETV5, IRF5, IRF7, RORB, RORC, and SMAD1 drive inflammatory and profibrotic signatures via the IL-17, JAK-STAT, and TGF-β pathways. Conclusions: This study identifies monocytes as central orchestrators of immune dysregulation in ASS-ILD, highlighting IFN/TNF signaling and associated transcriptional regulators as therapeutic targets.
Keywords: Antisynthetase syndrome, Interstitial Lung Disease, Monocytes, Interferon-gamma, TNF Signaling
Received: 24 Jun 2025; Accepted: 07 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Fan, Zhang, Su, Zheng, Lin, Zheng, Shen, Zhang and Wang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Guohong Zhang, g_ghzhang@stu.edu.cn
Yukai Wang, stzxyywyk@126.com
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